Stephen Roy Standage’s double-murder trial draws to an end

THE Crown’s case in a long-running double murder trial was launched like a powerful freight train promising a cargo of golden wheat, but had limped to its final destination offering little more than chaff, the accused’s defence has claimed.

Stephen Roy Standage, 61, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ronald Frederick Jarvis, 37, at Nugent in July 1992 and John Lewis Thorn, 59, at Lake Leake in August 2006.

In concluding the defence summing up yesterday in Hobart’s Supreme Court, Tamara Jago, SC, said in both cases the prosecution had fallen “woefully” short of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Ms Jago drew the court’s attention to two undercover police stings – one in Tasmania and another involving a fictitious crime gang based in Melbourne – that she said had resulted in not a single admission of guilt from her client.

She told the jury that some of Mr Standage’s more heroic or exaggerated claims made during the Victorian operation came simply from the fact that, unlike the Tasmanian sting, he was gaining financially from his continuing association with the gang – a benefit he risked losing by downplaying his criminal credentials.

“Milking these people for whatever he could get was pretty high on his agenda,” Ms Jago said.

“This undercover material doesn’t take the state anywhere near where they think it does.”

In the case of Mr Thorn, Ms Jago argued that while both victim and the accused were known marijuana growers, the evidence suggested they had always run separate operations, and that there was no suggestion of any animosity between the pair before Mr Thorn was killed.

She said Mr Standage lacked both the motive and the opportunity to kill the man she described as his best friend, saying witness sightings of the accused on the day of the murder gave him an impossibly small window of time to commit the crime before returning home to meet his mother and a visiting nurse.

“It is, ladies and gentlemen, impossible – and that is reasonable doubt,” she said.

“And that alone prevents you from convicting.”

Ms Jago said the fact that Mr Standage was the last known person to see either man alive was a fact her client volunteered to police himself at the earliest opportunity, and that a catalogue of supposed similarities between the two crimes had all proven unfounded.

“Have the courage to deliver the right verdict,” she urged the jury.

“Find him not guilty.”

Justice Stephen Estcourt will continue his final directions to the jury this morning.